Recursion - Blake Crouch Page 0,60
wood and the shriek of metal failing. When the door cracks open, Barry reaches through the opening and pulls off a broken, rusted padlock. Then he carefully opens the door wide enough for them to squeeze through.
They emerge into the hotel’s old boiler room, which looks to have been out of commission for at least the last half century. Threading their way through a labyrinth of ancient machinery and gauges, they finally pass the massive boiler itself, then move through a doorway to the bottom of a service stairwell that spirals up into darkness.
“What floor is Slade’s penthouse again?” Barry whispers.
“Twenty-four. The lab is on seventeen, servers on sixteen. You ready?”
“Wish we were taking the elevators.”
Their plan is to go straight for Slade, hoping he’ll be in his residence in the penthouse. The moment he hears gunfire or catches wind of anything suspicious, he’ll likely be running for the chair so he can go back and stop them before they even set foot inside his building.
Barry begins the ascent, keeping the flashlight trained on their feet. Helena follows closely behind, trying to step as softly as she can, but the old wood of the stairs flexes and groans under their weight.
After several minutes, Barry stops at a door with the number 8 painted on the wall beside it, and turns off the light.
“What is it?” Helena whispers.
“Heard something.”
They stand listening in the dark, her heart pounding and the shotgun growing heavier by the second. She can’t see a thing, can’t hear a thing but a faint, low moan that’s like breath passing over the opening of a bottle.
From high above, a single beam of light shoots down the center of the stairwell and slants toward them across the checkered floor.
“Come on,” Barry whispers, opening the door and pulling her into a corridor.
They move quickly down a red-carpeted hall of hotel rooms, whose numbers are projected onto the doors by lights in the opposing wall.
Halfway down the corridor, the door to Room 825 swings inward and a middle-aged woman steps out, wearing a navy robe with “HM” embossed on the lapel and carrying a silver ice bucket.
Barry glances over at Helena, who nods.
They’re ten feet from the hotel guest now, who hasn’t seen them yet.
Barry says, “Ma’am?”
When she looks in their direction, he aims his gun at her.
The ice bucket falls to the floor.
Barry brings a finger to his lips as they quickly close in.
“Not a word,” he says, and they push her back through the doorway and follow her into the room.
Helena locks the dead bolt, hooks the chain.
“I have some money and credit cards—”
“We’re not here for that. Sit on the floor and keep your mouth shut,” Barry says.
The woman must’ve just stepped out of the shower. Her black hair is damp, and there’s not a speck of makeup on her face. Helena doesn’t meet her eyes.
Dropping the duffel bag on the floor, Barry unzips it and pulls out the zip ties.
“Please,” she begs. “I don’t want to die.”
“No one’s going to hurt you,” Helena says.
“Did my husband send you?”
“No,” Barry says. He looks at Helena. “Go put some pillows in the bathtub.”
Helena grabs three pillows off the decadent four-poster bed and lays them in the claw-foot tub, which stands on a small platform with a view of dusk falling on the city and the buildings beginning to glow.
When she walks back out into the bedroom, Barry has the woman on her stomach and is binding her wrists and ankles. He finally lifts her over his shoulder and carries her into the bathroom, where he lays her gently in the tub.
“Why were you here?” he asks.
“You know what this place is?”
“Yes.”
Tears run down her face. “I made a bad mistake fifteen years ago.”
“What?” Helena asks.
“I didn’t leave my husband when I should’ve. I wasted the best years of my life.”
“Someone will come for you,” Barry says. Then he rips a piece from the roll of duct tape and pats it over her mouth.
They close the door to the bathroom. The gas-log fireplace is putting out a welcome heat. The bottle of Champagne the woman was apparently about to drink stands on the coffee table beside a single glass and an open journal, both pages filled with handwriting.
Helena can’t help herself. She glances at the elegant scrawl and realizes it’s the narrative of a memory, perhaps the one the woman in the bathtub was going back to.
It begins—The first time he hit me I was standing in